28 November

28 November 1920

Villa Isola Bella, Menton, France

Dearest Bogey
Your new book arrived today. Let me congratulate you on its appearance, darling. I wish it - Ah you know! I wish it Every Success. I greatly look forward to reading it carefully before you come & discussing it with you. Collins has certainly done you proud. It is a pleasant & entirely dignified volume. I am very fond of a longish shaped book with a narrow page: it is especially suited to criticism, somehow.
Yesterday I had your letter re the finances of the A. Really there is nothing to be said. Bonwick has sat on the poor egg to some purpose. I hate the directors for their stupidity and I detest that queer equine-faced nimrod Bonwick. The picture of you was lifelike. Your very legs were under the table. I would have known them among a million pairs. But child! you have a terrible pen for these small drawings. Dear! Dear! they are so pathetical. When Mother came back from Switzerland 1894 she brought me a tiepin made like a violet & one shut ones eye & looked through it at the Lion of Lucerne!! Your tiepins, darling, all are made of a diamond that's really a tear drop. I shut one eye & look through at my own little Lion - & my heart faints to see his sweet mane all in knots over his sums.
However, Liony dear, I am very happy to hear of your costume de flannelle, & I think rich brown gravy shoes would look awfully nice with it. What about a Daily Mail hat? They look, in pictures, really top-hole. Orpen I saw in one & thought immediately of you. They are, I imag¬ine the result of leaving a bowler & a felt hat between the hatters sheets. Will you try and get one? They haven't got Daily Mail written on em. [To J. M. Murry in Collected Letters 1920]